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KickStarter BioSynth: Rising - a turn-based sci-fi isometric RPG

Morblot

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Less than 10% funded at this stage? It's dead, might as well pull the plug now.
 

MartinK

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The problem is that when I look into the "also recomended" section of the page I see stuff I would like to back more. Biosynth is not exactly cute, cartoony and pixelart something I expect a proper social whale likes, which only makes the problem worse.
 

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Copin': https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neptunegames/biosynth/posts/3311415

That's a Win

Let me share something with you.

These are a few of the releases that happened in September or are happening in early October:
  • September 2nd: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (cRPG)
  • September 7th: Encased (cRPG)
  • September 17th: Tails of Iron (RPG)
  • September 23rd: Diablo 2: Resurrected (aRPG)
  • September 28th: New World (MMORPG)
  • October 5th: Wasteland 3: Cult of the Holy Detonation DLC (cRPG)
I can't remember a month so crowded with RPG releases. And 3 classic RPGs in a month? Usually that happens in 3 years.

Add that most of these are giants and that everyone is still talking about Pathfinder (great game!)... and you see that this was a tough month.

Yet, here we are.

We're doing fine, even in this incredibly competitive situation.

Do you know what does that mean? BioSynth has all the attributes to become a great game. It just needs the necessary support.

Let's go!

PS: in case you were wondering why we decided to launch in this tough month... it's because we announced it (it wasn't expected to be so crowded at the time) and we stick to what we say, even when that means going for the difficult route.
 

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While what first caught my attention was the super unique setting and characters. Oh wait, I mean the opposite of that.

But what grabbed me and made me back this project for all my money forever are the half assed screenshots with blatant errors, and this sort of response:

So we are talking about a couple of lines out of context... that is a measure of the writing for a game, for sure. Can you please tell me the overall story that is going on in the game? I'm curious.


Thank you for your opinion, it has proved my point.

That's the smarmy defensive shit I always go looking for out of new Euro devs. Tell us stupid Americans how wrong we are about how shit your game is. I want to know when I submit a bug report that I'll be met with an angry response about skyrim bugs.

For fucks sake you're making excuses for your nonexistent game before it's had a chance to fail on its own. You need to fix your attitude, generally when asking people to give you their hard earned money you should try to allay their concerns and lead them to believe their feedback will be valued. Instead you're like "Hey check out my garbage game fuck you for judging it based on what we've presented do you even know what it's about bro?"

No, I don't know the overall story in the game, and I have no interest whatsoever in finding out. That was your job, not mine.
 

MartinK

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Perhaps the game would get funded if it had elements of pornography in it. Gotta milk those coomers, you know. I mean the female characters already look like sexbots.
 

Serus

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While what first caught my attention was the super unique setting and characters. Oh wait, I mean the opposite of that.

But what grabbed me and made me back this project for all my money forever are the half assed screenshots with blatant errors, and this sort of response:

So we are talking about a couple of lines out of context... that is a measure of the writing for a game, for sure. Can you please tell me the overall story that is going on in the game? I'm curious.


Thank you for your opinion, it has proved my point.

That's the smarmy defensive shit I always go looking for out of new Euro devs. Tell us stupid Americans how wrong we are about how shit your game is. I want to know when I submit a bug report that I'll be met with an angry response about skyrim bugs.

For fucks sake you're making excuses for your nonexistent game before it's had a chance to fail on its own. You need to fix your attitude, generally when asking people to give you their hard earned money you should try to allay their concerns and lead them to believe their feedback will be valued. Instead you're like "Hey check out my garbage game fuck you for judging it based on what we've presented do you even know what it's about bro?"

No, I don't know the overall story in the game, and I have no interest whatsoever in finding out. That was your job, not mine.
One question. How did he know that you were American?

Other than that, some thin skinned guy who makes an unoriginal and bland game gets trashed on the Codex. How weird is that? This forum strongly likes or dislikes some projects from the start, how unusual... it is not. And the usual(?) suspects come and start irrelevantly babbling about Codex post's quality. How one's butt must be hurt to do that.
 

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neptunegames/biosynth/posts/3336514

What a Journey!

The campaign is over... and yes, it didn't reach its funding goal... but that's far from a failure. Quite the opposite!

Let me explain.

We learned many crucial lessons during the campaign – all of them will be of help on the road ahead.

It's also because of those lessons that we know how to go on in the development of BioSynth: Rising. In fact, we already planned our next steps. And we're more determined than ever in releasing the game – we even expanded our team to face the upcoming challenges.

Our current goal is to complete the demo.

The demo will help gathering the remaining funds – necessary to turn the game into reality.

By the way, we're very close to completing this demo (and if you want to support us, you can do it from here).

We've even created a page on our website where you can follow the game progress day by day: https://neptunegames.net/biosynth-progress/

Soon we'll also add a “News” section on our website. There, you'll be able to see what's going on.

Simply put: this isn't the end of BioSynth: Rising. On the contrary, this is just the beginning!

Talk soon,

Mauro D'Andrea – director and founder of Neptune Games

:fabulouslyoptimistic:
 

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neptunegames/biosynth/posts/3339847

We Got News!

Hello everyone,

A quick update to let you know that we now have a news section on our website :)

Sure, we'll be posting occasionally here on Kickstarter... but you'll find all the updates on our website, so be sure to check it out regularly if you don't miss any news.

By the way, today we just shared our first post to start that section.

Click here to read the post.

https://neptunegames.net/the-first-year-of-biosynth-rising/

The First Year of BioSynth: Rising

In the summer of 2020 we started BioSynth: Rising.

In a little more than a year, it has gone from this:

Start.gif

To this:

Skills.gif
Camera.gif
Party.gif

It all started as a one man project, but it continued as a team work.

Neptune-Games-Team-8-1024x683.png

We encountered many obstacles, but also had many funny moments:

Ladder-Bug.gif

Along the way, we met lots of cool friends…

Online-friends-1.jpg

… and in just 4 months our game appeared on quite a few websites and channels:
We launched a Kickstarter campaign that didn’t reach its funding goal, but considering that we had to work on a zero marketing budget and we didn’t have a publisher, we did pretty well.

This has been just our first year.

The best has yet to come!
 

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https://neptunegames.net/update-character-creation-quests-and-quality-of-life-ui/

Update: Character Creation, Quests, and Quality of Life UI

Since our last post, we’ve been working on quite a few things… let us show you a few of those!

Our next goal for BioSynth is to create and deliver a demo. We want you to have fun with it – which starts by being able to actually begin the game. So we worked on that.

Game Beginning
Now BioSynth has a main menu and a character creation screen.

Character-Creation.jpg

The background for the Character Creation screen.

We’re still working on these (we want to keep improving them), but they are working properly. So, at the moment, you could start BioSynth, create your character and begin playing it.

By the way: do you know what you’ll enjoy a lot when playing the game?

The Quests
During the demo, for obvious reasons, you won’t be able to complete the main quest… well, to tell it all, in the first chapter (which is the one you’ll play on the demo), you’ll barely progress in the main quest. Nonetheless, we want you to taste what we can do on a writing perspective.

That’s why we are putting much effort on the side quests that you’ll experience.

And our effort for the quests doesn’t just stop to the writing. In fact, recently, we’ve creating the UI related to the quest system – and also tried to make it as clear and usable as possible.

Quest-example.jpg

Now you can enjoy quests in BioSynth: Rising

Quality of Life UI
Let also say that the UI for the quest system isn’t the only one on which we’ve been working. In fact, we’ve added a few quality of life UI features, like for example the one below:

Combat-UI.jpg

78% chance of hitting the target… not bad, but maybe you better attacking him in other ways…

As you can see, when hovering the cursor on an enemy, you’ll be able to see your hit chance percentage and the AP cost for your attack. We plan on adding quite a few more of these in the upcoming weeks.

What’s Next?
Next we are going to create a fast yet exhaustive tutorial – and make it skippable… because we all hate non-skippable tutorials. With that in place, the demo would be fully playable (but before releasing it, we still have to improve some graphics, add useful features, enhance a few “things”, fix some bugs, etc…).

In the meantime, if you like what you see, please consider supporting the project so that we may speed up the work and deliver a better game.

See you in the next update!
 

Morblot

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Why the hell didn't they do all this polishing before embarassing themselves with the Kickstarter? Seems kind of dumb.

Anyway, it's starting to look at least serviceable, I've got to give it that...
 

NeptuneGames

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Why the hell didn't they do all this polishing before embarassing themselves with the Kickstarter? Seems kind of dumb.
Getting the funds would have helped the project speed up its progress. Well, it looks like it was a bad decision... my mistake! At least, the lesson learned is incredibly valuable.

Anyway, it's starting to look at least serviceable, I've got to give it that...
Thank you! There's still a ton of work to do, but one step at a time we'll do it.
 

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https://neptunegames.net/update-tutorial-and-upcoming-features/

Update: Tutorial and Upcoming Features

Let’s talk about BioSynth: Rising!

Imagine this: the long-awaited BioSynth finally comes out, you install it, and when it’s ready you launch the game; the music kicks in, you begin the play, and start creating your awesome character; everything is feeling great and you’re super excited.

After a short introduction to your story, you see your hero on a big level. Now what?

How does it move?

Do I move the mouse? Or does it require to use the keyboard? Maybe I need a cyber sword connected to my pc to play?

And those buttons! What are they? Signs of an alien civilization?

Oh, and look at that man on the map! Can I talk to that person? Or is it just an “enviromental object”?

Back to reality… this doesn’t feel good… and that’s why you put a tutorial level in a game.

Do you know what else feels bad? Having to play the tutorial even when you know a game better than yourself. And that’s why you put a skippable tutorial in a game.

In this period we worked exactly on this.

Playing BioSynth the First Time
Here’s a quick look at the tutorial map:

TutorialLevel.jpg

We made it short and to the point, while covering the key aspects you need to understand to play.

And you can always skip it, in part or as a whole, with the click of a button.

Skippable-Tutorial.jpg

Ah, don’t worry about forgetting something, because in your journal there’s a section with all the tutorial explanations – and even some additional tips that you won’t see in the tutorial walkthrough.

Upcoming Features and Content
Other than creating the tutorial, we worked (and are still working) on quite a few things, including:

  • Backstories and quests for the companions
  • Animations for the character creation screen
  • Quality of life UI features, for example, a widget that shows the turn sequencing during combat
  • Artistic style for UI elements
  • Bug fixing
We should be able to show something about some of these in about a week or two.

Before then, consider supporting the project – it’s of immense help and allows us to insert additional and cooler content in the upcoming demo.

Talk soon!
 

LarryTyphoid

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Are games like these money laundering schemes or something? It's like it was generated by an AI. "Biosynth: Rising"? What the fuck kind of name is that? I struggle to come up with a less appealing, less generic title for a video game. Maybe "ExWrath: The Reckoning" or "Holofaggot: Revelations". Just call it fucking BioSynth, retard. Even that name is generic enough without a retarded subtitle to drag it down even further.
 

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https://neptunegames.net/what-locations-are-in-biosynth-rising/

What Locations are in BioSynth: Rising?

You probably saw a few screenshots or videos about BioSynth…

… maybe you noticed that some of the locations seem quite different.

What’s going on?

Are we just crazy or there’s a reason for that?

You see, we worked on the lore a lot – we want to convey a complex and lively world. There’s a story behind everything you see.
  • Robots have free will? There’s a story behind it.
  • There’s a desert out there? There’s a story behind it.
  • A huge terrifying mutant is crushing your character? There’s a story behind it.
  • Etc…
Thus, to understand the map diversity, it helps to know a little bit of the lore.

A Glance at the Lore
BioSynth: Rising takes place in a dystopian world which is about 300 years forward, compared to our real world.

The name is Jaia.

There are quite a few continents and each of those has its own story… and, because of that, they feel very different.

Let me share an example!

In Krania, the continent where the game takes place, outside of the cities you see an arid environment. And there are gangs that populate the deserts. As a result, almost everyone lives in the few huge cities – which have walls to protect them from outsiders. The cities look totally different from their surroundings… in fact, thanks to an immense amount of resources in the continent, an incredible technological progress, and a great affinity of its people for commerce, Krania is thriving. Its cities look like the one you see in Blade Runner.

DesertOutside.png

Krania is a huge desert, outside of its cities.

On the other hand, let’s take a continent like Betiti. It has always focused most of its resources in the genetic field. As a result, when it comes to biology, Betiti can do unimaginable things. Its continet looks as if there were marvelous “green cities” perfecly integrated in the Amazonian rainforest. And it’s full of mutants: they are despised on every continent, except on Betiti where they are admired and considered the summit of the human evolution.

You won’t visit Betiti in BioSynth: Rising, but you’ll experience some of its marvels during the game

Now that you know a little more about the continent in which the game takes place, let’s talk a little about its specific locations.
Locations in BioSynth: Rising
First things first, the game starts in the most thriving city in Krania: Etheita.

For a few (un)fortunate events, you end up in the slums of the city.

Do you remember the walls surrounding the cities in Krania that we were talking about? Well, the slums is located outside of those walls. You know, the people with the power in the city didn’t want to spend money to protect the poor devils in the slums – and definitely they didn’t want to mix good workers with those “unproductive people”.

CityWallandSlums.png

The slums are separated from the rest of the metropolis by the city wall.

So, yes, you’ll visit the slums of the city.

But you’ll also get to see other districts in the city.

Of course, you’ll also get out of the city. To tell it all, there are a quite a few interesting locations outside of Etheita… including an alien-looking landscape where there’s nothing biologic, just “metallic stuff”. (Ah, in case you’re wondering: no, it is not that toxic landscape you saw in the Kickstarter trailer… that’s a different thing).

You’re free to explore the game world as you please. Actually we encourage you to do it!

Let’s be clear: this isn’t an open world game.

It’s a game like the old Baldur’s Gates, the old Fallouts, Pillars of Eternity, Solasta, etc. where you can visit points of interest on a map.

At the moment, we’re focusing our efforts on the locations you’ll be able to reach during the demo. But as we get to develope other areas, we’ll be sure to share some cool concept arts and screenshots.

Don’t forget to support BioSynth: Rising and help us publish this

See you next time!
 

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https://neptunegames.net/update-inventory-item-rarity-and-merchants/

Update: Inventory, Item Rarity and Merchants

Do you love strong weapons and sturdy armors?

Well, such items deserve a good inventory… so let’s talk about that!

The Inventory
Inventory.jpg

First things first: when you wear a nice piece of equipment, you want to see how cool you look, right?

That’s why your character (or one of your companions) is at the center of the inventory. And you can zoom/rotate the character, to take a better look at your gear.

ZoomMoveCharacter.gif

But you don’t just want your character to look cool, right? You want it to be powerful too, don’t you? Well, you have all the stats to the right, so you know what to equip and what not to equip.

To the left you have the group’s items. Yes, there’s one single inventory for the entire group, so you won’t have to switch between party members to search for an item.

You can sort the items, so you can always find the object you’re looking for, easily.

Filter.jpg

Keep in mind that this isn’t the final inventory system, we are still working on it and plan to add:
  • More slots other than armor and weapon
  • Filters button (so you can see only items of the selected category)
Item Rarity
Not all items are equal. While you’ll see some recurring items, you’ll also find some unique masterpieces during your journey.

To distinguish items at a glance, we translated our rarity system into the following graphics.

ItemRarity.jpg

Let me point out a couple of important things.

We’re creating each item manually – not appending random affixes to a base item.

In some cases, you may end up prefering an item of lower rarity. For example, a rare rifle could grant you a skill that you can’t get in any other way. So, don’t assume that lower rarity items will be trash after a while.

Merchants
We’ve been working on the merchant systems, which is now fully playable – but we’re going to add some additional features like filter buttons.

Merchant-1.jpg

Some merchants will have some of the best items in the game, so you’ll want to sell all your unused loot.

What’s Next
We want to publish some new videos about the game and show you something really cool…

… but it will take us a while

Don’t worry, we’ll share more updates along the way.

Talk soon!
 

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https://neptunegames.net/update-journal-turn-sequence-and-more/

Update: Journal, Turn Sequence and More

Want to know what’s new in BioSynth: Rising?

We’ve been working on quite a few features and content… let’s talk about a few of those!

The Journal
Your Journal is crucial to stay organized during your adventures and always know what to do and where to go.

In the Journal you’ll be tracking your quests.

Quests.jpg

Of course, every update we’ll be showing there. And your active quest will have its markers on the map – unless you’re doing a quest that takes place in secret locations.

But your Journal isn’t just about the quests… in fact, in it, you’ll find all the tutorials, so that you’ll always know how to perform a specific action and know the meaning of the UI.

Tutorial.jpg

We’re also considering additionals tabs for the Journal, like for example a lore tab.
Turn Sequence
Now, when a combat starts, you’ll see a widget that includes a portrait for each character involved in the fight.

TurnSequence.jpg

The sequence updates when a character dies or a new character appears in combat. And it highlights the character who is in its current turn.

Quality of Life Features
We’re adding more quality of life features, so that you have a clear understanding of what’s going on in the game.

For example, now when you hover your cursor over an enemy, if you have a ranged weapon equipped, you’ll see the trajectory of your potential attack. In this way, you are sure that you won’t be shooting obstacles on the way.

Shooting-Line.gif

Work in Progress

That said, if you like the project, remember to support it with a pre-order or donation – both helps us a lot in creating BioSynth!

Happy Holidays!
We’re pausing the news for the Holidays, so this is the last update of the year. We’ll get back at publishing posts with the new year.

We wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and hope you spend great Holidays in general!

Talk soon!
 

Infinitron

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https://neptunegames.net/update-a-ton-of-stuff/

Update: a Ton of Stuff

Since our last update we’ve been working on many aspects of the game… today we share a quick overview of that.

Here’s a list of the things we accomplished after our last update:
  • Created a map where you have indicators for party members, points of interest, and quests
  • Improved the main menu and character creation
  • Made new animations.
  • Now the mouse cursor shows additional infos like the fact that you can’t attack because you don’t have enough action points.
  • Made a level travelling system – which is also 80-90% of the work for the saving and loading system.
  • Set dressing for some of the levels in the upcoming demo.
  • Completed/started the blockout for some upcoming levels.
  • Improved the material handling for the project – making the material editing faster, cheaper and more powerful.
  • Refined the “hit chance” function.
  • Added art style for the surgeon skill tree.
  • Added art style for the status icons.
  • New concept art.
  • Added meshes for weapons and loot boxes.
  • Backstories for every companion but one.
  • Dialog writing for the quests.
  • Integrated quite a few new functions to handle additional quests situations.
  • Started working on an engine feature that will make it much easier and faster to handle a huge amount of complex branched dialogs.
  • Fixed many bugs.
Ok, enough about talking, we know you want to see something.
Let’s start by sharing a new concept art for one of the robots in the slums:

New-Robot-Concept-894x1024.jpg

This is an example of our new material handling.

Material-1.jpg

With the new material, we have a powerful customization tool. For example, in a few minutes we can add damages and dirt to transform the look of an object.
Let’s finish with some art…

StatusIcons.png

Some status icons
SurgeonSkillIcons.png

Some skill icons for the Surgeon class
SurgeonSkillTree.jpg

The skill tree of the Surgeon class
What’s Next?
In 3-4 weeks we expect to release a first version of an internal demo.

That will prepare the ground for the demo that we’ll share with all of you that supported us on Kickstarter. How long will it take to get there? We have an estimation for the time frame… but since we don’t know for sure, we prefer not to say it…

The good news is that we think you’ll enjoy the demo a lot

Talk soon!
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://neptunegames.net/update-final-steps-for-the-demo-0-1/

Update: Final Steps for the Demo 0.1

Are you excited for BioSynth: Rising?

We are

At the moment, we’re dealing with the final steps for the demo that we call “0.1”: a demo for the team to play and check that everything is going according to the plan.

So we’ll be testing and fixing the 0.1. Once we’re happy with the result, we’ll be sharing the demo with the people that backed us on Kickstarter and the people that supported the project with a pre-purchase here on our website. That would be the demo “1.0” – remember we’re talking about the demo, not the final game… and not even an early access of the game.

Now, if you’re wondering what the final steps of the 0.1 are…

Quests and World Building
We have had basically all the features that we wanted since the end of January. But when placing the quests into the engine, sometimes we noticed that we needed some small tweaks or additions.

Which means that we’ve been developing those.

For example, we needed an object that once repaired could spawn the hologram of an NPC with whom you can talk. And we realized only recently that we couldn’t do that with what we already had. So we had to build that.

Now we should be good to go.

Other than building the necessary features for the quests, we’ve been writing the dialogs.

Where are we at the moment? The dialogs for the side quests are already completed and we are going to complete the dialogs for NPC not related to quests soon.

Let’s share an example of dialog:

NPCDialog.jpg


This is the first interaction with an NPC involved in a side quest. It’s the simplest side quest you’ll find in the demo, yet it includes a complex NPC. And what you decide to do with him will have an impact later on in the game.

Want to know another cool thing?

Already in the demo, you’ll find some secondary NPCs who have a dialog chart that is more complex than the one above even if they are not related to any quest.

And here’s the best part: you can talk with these people, read the cool stories and immerse yourself in this type of world building… or just ignore them. Actually, you can even kill them right away – you’d miss a ton of content, but you are free to do that.

Towards the Demo 1.0
While we’re focused on completing the 0.1, we’re also planning the steps for the demo 1.0. And a part of the team is already working on some of those steps.

Let’s update soon!
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://neptunegames.net/update-bad-news-and-good-news/

Update: Bad News and Good News

Are you ready for some news about BioSynth: Rising?

We got bad news and good news.

Let’s start with the bad news: we decided to delay the demo 0.1 (the demo that we would play inside our team to test things) a little bit to take care of some development aspects.

We already have everything to complete the demo 0.1: the dialogs are written, the quests are ready to be placed into the engine, all the features work and all the assets are completed.

Then, why are we delaying the demo 0.1?

In the last post we showed the dialog for an NPC involved in a simple side quest. It seems quite complex, doesn’t it?

NPCDialog.jpg

The dialog for an NPC involved in a simple side quest

Well, when we consider an NPC involved in a quest that can be solved in many ways and by siding with different factions, things get a lot more complex.

With our current setup we can totally bring such a quest inside the game engine. But it’s more time consuming that we would like and there are chances for human mistakes. Sure, we can totally complete a demo… but this system would be a total mess for the final game. And our end goal is to deliver the best game we can – not just a good demo followed by a broken game.

That’s why we decided to create a better system before bringing all the quests inside the engine.
So let’s start with the good news

We’re creating something similar to the softwares that Obisidian and Larian used for their dialogs.

ObsidianDialogSoftware.jpg

The Software that Obsidian has used to handle dialogs in many of his games.

Once such software is ready, we’d have a series of big benefits:

  • No human mistakes when assigning a dialog to a NPC – everything would be fully automated.
  • The ability to write dialogs right inside the game engine – which means that we can add actions and requirement(s) right away.
  • Better dialogs! Since we immediately see every answer to a certain node, we have an easy way to notice when a specific dialog piece is missing depth.
  • Better dialogs part 2! We have the ability to easily count the requirements used in a single dialog or in all of them… so, if we notice that a specific requirement is not appearing enough times, we can add dialog pieces to adjust the thing.
  • A practical tool for localization and the eventual voice acting.
Now you’re probably wondering: what’s the current progress for this work?

We aren’t that far from completing it. Most of the core functions are already built and many of them are already integrated to work together. We can confidently say that we crossed the 50% mark.

BioSynthDialogSoftware-1024x740.jpg

The dialog software we’ve been developing. While it’s still ugly as hell and needs more work, it’s already doing a good job.

The good news is that once this dialog software is ready, we’ll be able to place all the quests and dialogs that we currently have in just a few days

This basically means that we’ll get back the time that we invested into the dialog software – so, at the end, while this caused a retard in the demo 0.1, it won’t cause a significant delay in the demo 1.0 – at most it will be just a small delay.

Let’s update soon!
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://neptunegames.net/update-quick-news-before-big-news/

Update: Quick News Before Big News

Just a quick update before we publish a big one

If you read the last post, you’ll remember that we were talking about a dialog software that could do great things.

Well, it is taking us longer than expected… but it’s almost ready – which is a very exciting event!

The great news is that it’s already working. We already used it and it’s amazing.

It’s just missing some last utility features and finishing touches.

DialogMaker.jpg

It’s cool that we can write any dialog in-engine and have it working right away. With a few clicks we can add requirements and actions to any dialog line… and thanks to icons we can see all the actions and requirements for any dialog node at a glance.

We have to add a couple of addictional actions and requirements, and once that’s done, we’ll be able to create basically any quest a writer can think of.

Now let’s move one to another topic

We’ve been working on some interior levels that will be in the demo. Here a couple of the simplest ones:

Interior1.jpg

Interior2.jpg

Soon we’ll be able to complete all the interiors… and if we are on-time, we could be able to do a cool extra thing for the demo

Let’s update soon with some big news. In the meantime we wish you a happy Easter!
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://neptunegames.net/update-good-stuff/

Update: Good Stuff :)


Recently we haven’t shared much publicly, but this doesn’t mean we were chilling on a tropical island… on the contrary, we were working behind the scenes.

Let’s talk about what’s been going on.

New Functionalities… and Bugs​

Do you remember the tool we’ve been building to handle conversation? If you don’t, you can read about it here.

Well, before going on with the game development, we took the time to add some functionalities to it… some of which could make us better surprise you during the game. For example, you may approach an ostile-looking NPC expecting him to be alone… 4 VS 1 is a pretty easy fight, isn’t it? It’s a shame that once you talk with the NPC, he calls some friends who were hiding and now you have to fight 4 VS 7. This is one of the cool things that are doable with the dialog tool we made.

Once we completed the new functionalities, we wanted to test the tool by placing a complex conversation into it… and that’s were an endless cycle of pain began.

We already used the tool to place some simple conversations into the game and it worked perfectly. All the bugs arose when working with a complex dialog.

Fixing all those bugs took us a very long time…

… but in the end we did it. We fixed all the bugs that prevented us to use the tool as we wanted.

Do you know what? The hard work was very well worth it! Thanks to the dialog maker, we can currently place a relatively complex dialog inside the game in just a few hours. It’s fast! And it’s a great tool to improve dialogs.

Here’s an example of the type of branched dialogs that this tool allows us to build.

Dialog-537x1024.jpg

This leads us to the next point.

Dialogs, dialogs, dialogs​

At this very moment, if we look at all the dialogs in the game, there are 10.827 words. That’s about 1/4 of a novel, which probably is pretty good for a demo

Also, let me say that such count will likely increase before we’ll deliver the demo to you.

But it isn’t all about the quantity… in fact, our priority in dialogs is the quality of the writing.

Let’s talk about the example shown in the image above.

  • Some of the dialog lines won’t appear right away – you’ll need to unleash certain events to see some options.
  • Some dialog lines will impact your reputation – thus influencing how other NPCs respond to you.
  • Some of those lines are completely optional and shows you a bit of the lore.
  • Etc…
Sure, that dialog isn’t perfect (and we want to keep improving it), but it’s a step in the right direction.

Here’s a good news: we already placed ALL the dialogs for the demo inside the game – even though we’re still working on them to keep improving. It means that we’re very close to releasing the internal demo for testing Like VERY close.

Reworking the Environment​

After careful thoughts, we decided to reword the environment of the district of the city that you’ll visit at first during the game.

It was a tough decision, but the district look wasn’t 100% fulfilling our standards.

It’s some extra-work and it will take some extra-time, but we want to deliver the best quality that we can. And this is on the way of accomplishing that. We hope you’ll understand us.

We can’t show anything yet… but it’s going to be more cyberpunk than you saw on the Kickstarter trailer.

New Characters​

We’re considering the introduction of a high status character inside the demo. He’s very powerful and cool… think of it like meeting Drizzt Do’Urden in Baldur’s Gate 1.

In case you’re wondering: yes, if you want, you’ll be able to fight him… but he’ll just destroy you while in the demo – it’s a fight for high levels, so in the final game you are free to come back and face him… and loot an amazing unique item if you get to win.

We think this is a cool way to show you the world building behind BioSynth and let you get a glance at what type of content will be in the final game.

So… are we going to show you the concept art for this character?

No

Maybe in the future.

On the other hand, we have another character’s concept art to share with you so that you’ll forgive us.

ConceptArt-666x1024.jpg

Ok, that’s it for today. We’ll likely share another interesting update very soon, so don’t forget to check us in next week(s).

Talk soon!
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://neptunegames.net/update-demo-0-1/

Update: Demo 0.1


It took a long time, but finally we got to this point: we have a demo!

It’s a demo that we’re already playing inside our team to test things and see the combined result of our work.

A Quick Overview​

So, right now you can start the game, create your character and start the tutorial – or just skip it (but we suggest not to skip it in your first game session).

Character-Creation.jpg

There’s a short introduction that explains how you end up in a strange place: a sewer.

Sewer.jpg

At this point, you’re in the game. So just have fun

You can try to progress in the main story… or just wander around a part of the city looking for quests, buying stuff, killing bad guys, learning secrets, etc…

Merchant.jpg
Quests.jpg

At this very moment, basically everything is “rough” and many things are not as pretty as they are going to be… but the game works, from start to finish – which corresponds to something less than Chapter 1 for the final game.

This is were we’re going to focus our efforts now: make things a little prettier and a bit more refined – other than doing a ton of bug fixing.

Once we’re satisfied with the result of this upcoming work, we’ll make you have the demo so that you can have fun with it

What to Expect​

Let’s be clear: what we are building is not an early access for the game.

The content is nowhere near what we plan on having in an eventual early access, let alone the final game.

So, don’t expect hours upon hours of content yet. To do most of the things in the demo, you’ll spend about a couple of hours – not bad for a demo, don’t you think? Add an extra hour or so if you want to do another run so that you can solve one of the quests in a different way and maybe try different skills.

This demo will be a way to make you experience a little of BioSynth.

And if you enjoy what we’ve been doing up to know, you’ll enjoy what will come later too

Talk soon!
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Good luck to them. Hopefully they can take feedback and constructive criticism better than they did in this thread. Concept is interesting.
 

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